This study examined the effects of response restriction (blocking and protective equipment) on subsequent durations of self-injury with two female participants with developmental disabilities. First, a functional analysis was conducted with each participant to identify potential maintaining variables of the self-injury. Second, access to the response was systematically restricted in a multiple schedule restriction paradigm. A baseline extended alone was conducted without the restriction component in place as a control condition. For one participant the results suggested that response restriction may have increased subsequent durations of responding once the restriction element was removed. For a second participant responding did not appear to be affected by the restriction component.

A population survey was conducted from April through September 2002 on mosquito species occurring on the Ray Roberts Greenbelt, a riparian corridor used for public recreation on the Elm Fork of the Trinity River, in Denton County, Texas. ArcGIS software was used to set up a stratified random sampling design based on habitat parameters. Multivariate analyses of sampling data and climatic variables were used to describe spatial and temporal patterns of mosquito species. A total of 33 species were collected during this study belonging to the following genera: Aedes, Anopheles, Coquillettidia, Culex, Mansonia, Ochlerotatus, Orthopodomyia, Psorophora, Toxorhynchites, and Uranotaenia. Seasonal distributions of the dominant species revealed population fluctuations. Aedes vexans was the primary species collected in April and May, occurring in low numbers throughout the rest of the sampling period. Psorophora columbiae reached its highest population density in June, with a smaller peak occurring in late July. Present from May through the end of September, Culex erraticus was the most abundant species collected with major peaks in mid-June and the end of July. Abundance of Culex salinarius followed the same general trend as that for Cx. erraticus, but with smaller numbers. The specimens were tested for a variety of arboviruses …

This thesis surveys a variety of songs and arias for high soprano which feature the nightingale; examines the musical elements that symbolize, refer to, or imitate the nightingale; and compares these musical elements with transcriptions of the nightingale's song. The first chapter reviews the symbolic development of the nightingale and its role in poetry and literature. The interior chapters address a selection of musical compositions that feature the nightingale and its song. The final chapter establishes a relationship between the sound of the actual sound of the nightingale and the musical gestures created by composers to imitate the nightingale.

Divine and the Everyday Devil contains a scholarly preface that discusses the experiences and literary works that influenced the author's writing with special attention in regards to spirituality and sexuality. The preface is followed by six original short stories. "Evil" is a work addressing a modern conception of evil. "Eschatology" concerns a man facing his own mortality. "The Gospel of Peter" tells the story of a husband grappling with his wife's religious beliefs. "The Mechanics of Projects" relates the experiences of a woman looking for love in Mexico. "The Rocky Normal Show" involves a husband growing apart from his wife and "Mutant: An Origin Story" is about a teenager trying to find his own unique identity.

The objective of the survey is to observe students' perceptions of videoconference courses offered by the University of North Texas (UNT). The perceptions of 348 students enrolled in videoconferencing (VC) courses in the fall 2002 semester were obtained through a 29-item course evaluation questionnaire. From this study, I conclude generally that UNT students perceive videoconference courses as a positive stride in providing classes. While it was expected that students at remote sites would experience greater technological problems and lower levels of student/teacher interaction, evaluations from remote sites indicate higher degrees of student satisfaction than those students taking VC courses at the main campus location.

Kurt Vonnegut's early science fiction novels depict societies and characters that, as in the real world, have become callous and downtrodden. These works use supercomputers, aliens, and space travel, often in a comical manner, to demonstrate that the future, unless people change their concepts of humanity, will not be the paradise of advanced technology and human harmony that some may expect. In fact, Vonnegut suggests that the human condition may gradually worsen if people continue to look further and further into the universe for happiness and purpose. To Vonnegut, the key to happiness is dignity, and this key is to be found within ourselves, not without.

As one of the most remarkable of the Scottish Covenanters, George Gillespie had a reputation in England and Scotland as an orthodox Puritan theologian and apologist for Scottish Presbyterianism. He was well known for his controversial works attacking the ceremonies of the Church of England, defending Presbyterianism, opposing religious toleration, and combating Erastianism. He is best remembered as one of the Scottish Commissioners to the Westminster Assembly in London, which sought to reform the English Church and establish a uniform religion for the two kingdoms. This study assesses his life, ideas, and legacy. In Gillespie's estimation revelation and reason played complementary roles in the Christian life. While the Fall had affected man's reasoning abilities, man could rely upon natural law and scholarship as long as one kept them within the limits of God's truth revealed in Scripture. Moreover, he insisted that the church structure its worship ceremonies, government, and discipline according to the pattern set forth in the Bible. In addition, he emphasized the central role of God's Word and the sacraments in the worship of God and stressed the importance of cultivating personal piety. At the heart of Gillespie's political thought lay the Melvillian theory of the two kingdoms, …

The objective of this study was to determine how a new experimental methodology for measuring Total-Harmonic-Distortion (THD) of operational amplifiers functioned when compared with two standard methodologies, and whether the new methodology offers any improvement in noise floor and dynamic range along with distortion canceling of the sine-wave source used in the testing. The new methodology (THD) is being tested against two standard methodologies: Spectral Analysis using a tuned receiver type Spectrum Analyzer with Notch Filter pre-processing, and a digitized Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) using Notch Filter pre-processing. The THD results appear to agree across all methodologies, and across all items of the sample within all methodologies, to within a percent or less. The distortion and noise canceling feature of the new methodology appeared to function as expected and in accordance with theory. The sample tested in the study consisted of thirty-five NE5534 operational amplifiers produced by Texas Instruments, Inc. and purchased from a local store. The NE5534 is a low-noise, low-distortion, operational amplifier that is widely used in industry and is representative of today's best audio amplifiers.

Recently my creative process has led to a new area of investigation and exploration. I have discovered that I enjoy the unexpected occurrences that happen while painting. I have an appreciation for the parts of my works that do not follow the preliminary sketch and are produced more subconsciously. While usually this aspect has been restricted by the adherence to a preliminary sketch and narrative, the new works explore these occurrences more fully. In the new works, I worked in a more spontaneous manner to create work that does not focus strictly on narrative but reveals itself more as a journey or exploration.

A functional analysis, conducted to assess the variables maintaining the chronic eye poking of a female diagnosed with profound mental retardation, indicated that the behavior persisted in the absence of social contingencies. A procedure was initiated in a training environment in which a punisher (mild reprimand) was delivered contingent on eye poking in the presence, but not in the absence, of a neutral stimulus (wristbands). Using a combination of multiple baseline and multielement experimental designs, it was determined that that eye poking was suppressed in the presence of the previously neutral stimulus, even in environments in which the reprimand contingency was inoperative.

Data warehousing (DW) in the last decade has become the technology of choice for building data management infrastructures to provide organizations the decision-making capabilities needed to effectively carry out its activities. Despite its phenomenal growth and importance to organizations the rate of DW implementation success has been less than stellar. Many DW implementation projects fail due to technical or organizational reasons. There has been limited research on organizational factors and their role in DW implementations. It is important to understand the role and impact of both technical but organizational factors in DW implementations and their relative importance to implementation performance. A research model was developed to test the significance of technical and organizational factors in the three phases of implementation with DW implementation performance. The independent variables were technical (data, technology, and expertise) and organizational (management, goals, users, organization). The dependent variable was performance (content, accuracy, format, ease of use, and timeliness). The data collection method was a Web based survey of DW implementers and DW users sampled (26) from a population of 108 identified DW implementations. Regression was used as the multivariate statistical technique to analyze the data. The results show that organization factors are significantly related to performance. …

The purpose of this experiment was to evaluate the effects of alternative contingencies on instruction following by an ABA design. Three college students consistently pressed keys 1-5-3 and 4-8-6 in the presence of the written instruction "Press 153" or "Press 486." During condition A, the contingencies for following and not following the instruction were the same: CON FR5 FR5 and CON FR20 FR20. During condition B, the contingencies for following and not following the instruction were different: CON FR20 FR5. For one participant, the schedule of reinforcement was then changed to FR30. The results showed that subjects followed instructions when the schedule of reinforcement was the same for instruction following and not following.

The well-being of the American steel industry is vital to the overall health of the United States (U.S.) economy. This belief is, in part, the impetus for the enactment of protective tariffs and quotas. This paper examines the impact of the announcement of the 2001 tariffs. Numerous forces have buffeted the U.S. steel industry over the last decade. Domestic steel firms operate in a highly global, fiercely competitive, and capital-intensive industry. This environment has proven inhospitable to the U.S. steel industry, widely criticized for inefficiency and overcapacity. A regression analysis finds that the announcement of the 2001 tariffs had no statistically significant impact on U.S. domestic raw steel production. Supporting theories are reexamined, and the implications of this finding for trade policy are explored.

The purpose of this study was to examine how male and female leaders view their own effectiveness as compared to their objective performance. This study also examined sex and gender differences in subordinate's views of male and female leaders. Forty-two mixed-sex groups led by appointed male and female leaders were observed to assess objective and perceived leader effectiveness. Gender role of participants was assessed using the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI). No sex or gender differences were found in objective leadership effectiveness. An unexpected finding was that male and female leaders perceived themselves accurately as leaders. Significant differences were found in the way male subordinates rated men and women leaders when taking into account gender role. Results indicated that the study of gender bias in leadership is complex and should be examined in conjunction with gender role. Social role theory helps to explain this bias.

The immediate and subsequent effects of different durations of response restriction were evaluated in a multiple schedule design. Response restriction components of 15, 30, and 60 minutes were conducted between 15 minute alone components. Levels of responding subsequent to the termination of response restriction procedures were compared to free operant levels prior to the implementation of response restriction. Responding during response restriction components reduced to near zero levels. Subsequent levels of responding were similar to or exceeded free operant baseline levels. Results are discussed in terms of potential operant mechanisms responsible for levels of responding subsequent to response restriction.

Security is one of the main concerns of users who need to connect to a remote computer for various purposes, such as checking e-mails or viewing files. However in today's computer networks, privacy, transmission to intended client is not guaranteed. If data is transmitted over the Internet or a local network as plain text it may be captured and viewed by anyone with little technical knowledge. This may include sensitive data such as passwords. Big businesses use firewalls, virtual private networks and encrypt their transmissions to counter this at high costs. Secure shell protocol (SSH) provides an answer to this. SSH is a software protocol for secure communication over an insecure network. SSH not only offers authentication of hosts but also encrypts the sessions between the client and the server and is transparent to the end user. This Problem in Lieu of Thesis makes a study of SSH and creates a sample secure client and server which follows SSH and examines its performance.

A major concern many counselor trainees face when preparing to see their first couple-client is that of confidence because they have had little to no experience in interacting in a professional capacity with couples. Many beginning counselors experience anxiety, which can inhibit their effectiveness with clients (Scanlon & Baille, 1994). Introducing counselor trainees to a relatively non-threatening interaction with couples might reduce the initial anxiety that characterizes the neophyte counselor venturing into new clinical territory. The interaction may also enhance feelings of warmth and closeness of the couples. John Gottman's Oral History Interview (Gottman, 1999) was the protocol used in the interaction between trainee and couple. An instrument developed for this study to measure couple counseling confidence, the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, 1983), and the Personal Assessment of Intimacy in Relationships (Schaefer & Olson, 1981) were used to assess levels of counselor confidence, counselor anxiety, and couple intimacy, respectively. The confidence instrument and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory were administered to 37 students who were enrolled in four graduate level introductory couple counseling classes and who interviewed couples, as well as to 34 counselor-trainees who were enrolled in five graduate level counseling courses other than couple counseling and who did not …

Human auditory perception is suited to receiving and interpreting information from the environment but this knowledge has not been used extensively in designing computer-based information exploration tools. It is not known which aspects of sound are useful for accurately conveying information in an auditory display. An auditory display was created using PD, a graphical programming language used primarily to manipulate digital sound. The interface for the auditory display was a blank window. When the cursor is moved around in this window, the sound generated would changed based on the underlying data value at any given point. An experiment was conducted to determine which attribute of sound most accurately represents data values in an auditory display. The four attributes of sound tested were frequency-sine waveform, frequency-sawtooth waveform, loudness and tempo. 24 subjects were given the task of finding the highest data point using sound alone using each of the four sound treatments. Three dependent variables were measured: distance accuracy, numeric accuracy, and time on task. Repeated measures ANOVA procedures conducted on these variables did not rise to the level of statistical significance (α=.05). None of the sound treatments was more accurate than the other as representing the underlying data values. 52% …

This thesis is an examination of "paranoid conspiracy" films, a film noir subgenre that emerged in mainstream American cinema in the early 1970s and turns on vast, shadowy conspiracies located within U.S. "power structures" (government agencies, the military, the media) and directed against the American public. Specifically, it focuses on the emergence of these films in the 1970s, their almost complete disappearance during the Reagan presidency, and subsequent reemergence in the early 1990s. Placing representative texts in the context of U.S. political and social reality of the last three decades, it analyzes the relationship between the conspiracy theory genre, the "crisis of confidence" in the American society, and the process of formation of American national identity.

The Pink Papers is a collection of three short stories and a novel in progress consisting of four chapters. Each piece is a work of original fiction. The preface addresses the female writer and the female voice in fiction. "Broken Clock" and "Pink Paper" are the stories of two girls coping with endometriosis. "Normal Capacity" looks at the loss of a dream through the eyes of a first-year law student. The novel in progress, titled Blanchard, OK, is set in a rural farming town in Oklahoma. The novel tells the stories of 24-year-old Robin, her Aunt Paula, and Paula's boyfriend, Sam.

Nineteenth-century British fiction is often dismissed as necrophillic or obsessed with death. While the label of necrophilia is an apt description of the fetishistic representations of dead women prevalent at the end of the century, it is too narrow to fit literature produced earlier in the century. This is not to say that abnormal attitudes toward death are only a feature of the late nineteenth century. In fact, pathological attitudes toward death abound in the literature, but the relationship between the deceased and the survivor is not always sexual in nature. Rather, there is a clear shift in attitudes, from the chaste death fantasy, or attraction to the idea of death, prevalent in Gothic works, to the destructive, stagnant mourning visible in mid-century texts, and culminating in the perverse sexualization of dead women at the turn of the century. This literary shift is most likely attributable to the concurrent changes in attitudes toward sex and death. As sex became more acceptable, more public, via the channels of scientific discourse, death became a less acceptable idea. This “denial of death” is a direct reaction to the religious uncertainties brought about by industrialization. As scientists and industrialists uncovered increasing evidence against a …

The thesis examines the relationship between Martha Stewart's rendition of domesticity and a broader cultural trend of the late 1990s U.S. domestic retreatism. It argues that the mode of construction and representation of the "domestic dream" in Stewart's programs cannot be examined outside of such concepts as class and ethnicity, whose understanding depends on the cultural, social, and political context of a given era, a context, in which they become transparent as aspects of the Western (white, patriarchal) status quo. Performing a deconstructive reading of these categories as employed by Stewart in the process of creation of her media persona, the thesis examines what the negative as well as positive reactions to "Martha Stewart" convey about the condition of American society of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Methyl-functionalized porous silica is of considerable interest as a low dielectric constant film for semiconductor devices. The structural development of these materials appears to affect their gelation behaviors and impact their mechanical properties and shrinkage during processing. 29Si solution NMR was used to follow the structural evolution of MTMS (methyltrimethoxysilane) polymerization to gelation or precipitation, and thus to better understand the species that affect these properties and gelation behaviors. The effects of pH, water concentration, type of solvents, and synthesis procedures (single step acid catalysis and two-step acid/base catalysis) on MTMS polymerization were discussed. The reactivity of silicon species with different connectivity and the extent of cyclization were found to depend appreciably on the pH value of the sol. A kinetic model is presented to treat the reactivity of both silicon species involved in condensations separately based on the inductive and steric effects of these silicon species. Extensive cyclization in the presence of acid, which was attributed to the steric effects among numerous reaction pathways for the first time, prevents MTMS gelation, whereas gels were obtained from the two-step method with nearly random condensations. The experimental degree of condensation (DC) at the gel point using the two-step procedure was determined …

This study investigates the correlation between students' learning styles, computer competency and student satisfaction in Web-based distance learning. Three hundred and one graduate students participated in the current study during the Summer and Fall semesters of 2002 at the University of North Texas. Participants took the courses 100% online and came to the campus only once for software training. Computer competency and student satisfaction were measured using the Computer Skill and Use Assessment and the Student Satisfaction Survey questionnaires. Kolb's Learning Style Inventory measured students' learning styles. The study concludes that there is a significant difference among the different learning styles with respect to student satisfaction level when the subjects differ with regard to computer competency. For accommodating amd diverging styles, a higher level of computer competency results in a higher level of student satisfaction. But for converging and assimilating styles, a higher level of computer competency suggests a lower level of student satisfaction. A significant correlation was found between computer competency and student satisfaction level within Web-based courses for accommodating styles and no significant results were found in the other learning styles.